Ransomware, spearphishing, account takeover—sophisticated cybercrime is on the rise. To ensure your organization is protected against data loss in the face of these threats, experts recommend that every business follow the “3-2-1” rule:
This means that no single event will be able to destroy all copies of your data, helping to keep your business up and running in the event of a security incident.
Implementing these steps manually can be a logistical nightmare for IT and security teams, particularly in today’s digital world where the data cosmos is ever-expanding. There are currently 40 times more bytes of data in the digital universe than the number of stars in the observable universe; look up at the sky and imagine trying to create a copy of each star you see, and logging those copies so you can find them later. Now imagine doing that 40 times over.
Thankfully, there’s a solution that makes this task easier.
Backup and recovery solutions create point-in-time copies of files, databases, and servers, and write these copies out to a secondary storage platform isolated from your local devices, so that they can be recovered in the future. They safeguard against the consequences of data loss by ensuring that organizations always have access to their data, even if the original copy is destroyed accidentally or as a result of malicious activity.
But if you’ve already got preventative security tools in place, why is it so important for you to create backups of your data anyway?
Well, there are a number of reasons why your business should consider implementing a backup and recovery solution. Let’s take a closer look at them.
Mitigate Ransomware Attacks
In recent years, we’ve seen a surge in the reporting of malware incidents; a recent report found that 81% of organizations have experienced an attack involving some form of malware. Malware is short for “malicious software”, and it does exactly what the name suggests. Once installed on a user’s machine, it wreaks havoc on the connected network. There are many different types of malware, some of which are used to spy on users’ activities or steal login credentials, for example. But one of the most prevalent and dangerous currently in circulation is ransomware.
Once downloaded, ransomware holds data hostage, either by locking users out of it or encrypting it so that it becomes unreadable to anyone without the decryption key. Once an attacker successfully seizes an organization’s data, they demand a ransom for its return. However, paying the ransom doesn’t always guarantee that you’ll get your data back, nor that the ransomware will be completely removed from your system afterward; you are dealing with a cybercriminal, after all.
While your organization may have preventative security tools—such as a secure email gateway or antivirus software—in place to help stop ransomware from infiltrating your systems, hackers are constantly finding new ways to evade these methods of protection. The fact is that ransomware cases are on the rise; it’s no longer a matter of whether you’re likely to be hit by an attack but, instead, what you will do when the attack strikes.
Having a strong backup and recovery solution in place means that, should your organization be targeted by ransomware or any other file-destroying malware strain, you will be able to recover from the attack without having to pay the ransom, and without having to worry about any malware remnants lurking in the dusty corners of your network. You simply cleanse all of your storage devices completely, then set the backup solution to restore all of your data.
For a more detailed walk-through of this process, check out our guide on how to recover from a ransomware attack.
Mitigate Human Error
Whether it be the accidental deletion of a file that turns out to be mission-critical a few months down the line, or a spilt coffee on the commute resulting in the total destruction of all data held on an employee’s laptop, it’s inevitable that your organization is going to suffer some amount of data loss caused by accident. We’re all human, after all.
The strongest backup and recovery solutions not only let you restore an entire system in the event of a disaster, but also feature robust eDiscovery tools that enable you to search for and restore specific files, emails and, in some cases, even chat history.
With backups securing your data, there’s no need to cry over a spilled cappuccino.
Recover From Natural Disasters
Incidents involving humans, whether accidental or malicious, aren’t the only causes for data loss that your business may face. Some organizations, particularly those with offices in more environmentally volatile parts of the world, could lose data records at the hands of Mother Nature.
It’s easy to overlook the possibility of a physical threat, particularly when headlines so often scream of the digital ones we have to face. But remember the rule of 3-2-1: it’s always sensible to keep at least one copy of your data offsite. This is because fires, floods and natural disasters can be just as dangerous as a hacker if all of your data is stored in one physical location. These types of events can bring all of your systems down and, without backups in place, it can be impossible to recover any lost data.
Most backup and recovery solutions enable you to choose whether you’d like to store your backed-up data in an on-premises location, a virtual private or public cloud environment, or the vendor’s own virtual cloud environment. We recommend that you try to utilize two of these options where possible or, failing that, to ensure that you have at least one copy of your data stored in an off-site, virtual environment.
Stay Compliant
In recent years, businesses have increasingly been put under pressure to ensure the security of the data they use on a day-to-day basis, from employee records to customers’ personal information. Some regulatory standards also mandate that this data is to be stored securely for a number of years.
A robust backup and recovery solution securely encrypts and archive all of your records, which could not only help you when it comes to meeting compliance and auditing requirements, but can also help you in the event of litigation.
Grow Your Reputation
There are two parts to this benefit. The first is that, if your industry is hit by a large-scale attack and you have a backup solution in place, you’ll be able to recover with as little downtime as possible and continue providing your services—more quickly than those organizations that failed to invest in adequate backup, thus struggle to recover their data. This gives you an advantage over your competitors.
The second is that data breaches cause a lack of trust. If you lose your customers’ data, the likelihood is that they’re going to switch to one of your competitors who can assure them that their data will be secure while they use their service. Implementing a backup and recovery solution enables you to assure your customers and partners that their data is secure and won’t be destroyed as a result of a security incident.
Summary
In today’s hybrid-remote, hybrid-cloud workplace, your organization’s data is at risk from all directions. Having a backup and recovery solution in place means that, when the inevitable happens and you find that data has been lost, destroyed or scrambled, you can recover quickly from the incident.
There are lots of backup solutions on the market, each offering different features to meet certain business and industry requirements. To help you find the right one for you, we’ve put together two guides to the best backup solutions on the market. The first of these is tailored towards SMBs looking for cost-effective backup and archiving tools. The second includes the best products for quick file server and cloud-hosted (including Office 365) data recovery in the event of a disaster.
You can read these guides via the links below:
